


May She Find Solace

by Forever_Tank



Series: Pearlnet Bomb 2019 [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blood and Injury, Crime Fighting, F/F, Guns, Near Death, Renegade Pearl, Revenge, Selectively mute Garnet, Serious Injuries, Violence, hehe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:05:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Forever_Tank/pseuds/Forever_Tank
Summary: “This is the only mercy that I’ll grant you. Next time you interfere with my business, I won’t be so kind; and I won’t make the kill so clean either.” The assailant almost whispered. She slithered away, watching her for a moment. “They know me as ‘Renegade’, you’d do best to remember that name, Garnet.”





	May She Find Solace

**Author's Note:**

> Superhero au? Superhero au.
> 
> Day 2's prompts was revenge/music. I chose the former

 

The mask peeled off her face, stuck to her skin from sweat and blood. Garnet held it in her rough hands, numb fingers shaking and barely keeping grip on the slick material. It had the look of leather from a distance, but it was made of Kevlar, and plastered right above the lens of the right eye was a deeply dented hole, a smashed bullet stuck in it. Blood seeped from her brow, dripping down onto the black, glossy material. The mask slipped from feelingless fingers, falling onto the concrete floor of her basement with a loud clattering.

Her right arm was a mess of bruises and knife slashes barely covered by whatever bandaids she had on hand, and the other was not much better, a black and blue stretched from her shoulder to her elbow, a deep cut marring her wrist that had just barely missed a major artery; butterfly stitches kept that one together.

Yeah, she came out of that fight bad, but at least she didn’t come out dead. The four she took on couldn’t say that much, and at any moment the police would be finding the bodies piled into a phone booth. Garnet tried reaching behind her head to pull her hair out of its ponytail, but firey pain shooting down her arms and shoulders made her wince, and she stopped the attempt. 

It took a long time for her to get up off the chair she sat herself on and even longer to treat her wounds properly in the cramped bathroom on the first floor. She peeled the black short sleeved shirt off her body and examined the damage to her torso, wincing at the spattering of bruises and cuts. Some were layered on top of scars that were already there. Shaky hands cleaned and bandaged what they could, then Garnet threw down two tablets and chewed them, grunting at the bitter taste.

For a moment, she stared in the mirror, looking at the cut on her brow, long enough to almost connect with the scar stretching from eyelid to jaw, an eye that has long since dulled with blindness completing the look. It wasn’t like that when she first received the scar, only in the recent years had a few good hits to the head resulted its trauma, where if she was lucky she could occasionally see smudges of color from it. Peridot at one point offered to repair it, but Garnet wasn’t as fond of cybernetics as the almost-robot woman was.

She dragged herself to the mattress in her bed room, on the floor with no box spring, and threw herself on it with a low groan, shifting uncomfortably when pain fired through every part of her body. Garnet stared at the ceiling, breathing lowly, trying to will her body to shake off the last of the adrenaline rushing through her and sleep.

\--

Garnet didn’t go out again until a few weeks later, once the bulk of her wounds were healed enough for her to be able to maneuver without much pain. They still needed more time, but Garnet was restless. She doubled dosed on her tablets and headed down to her basement with the bitter taste of the pills still stinging her tongue. Everything was laid out for her neatly on the table, and with practiced ease she had all her gear on within a few minutes, finishing the last of the straps of her bulletproof vest with some difficulty as the cut on her arm protested the movements.

Clicking the buckle into place, she tied her hair back and reached for her mask.

_ Solace. _

Written across the laced mouth--almost resembling overlapping needles- in white lettering was the word. She had written it twenty years ago when she first made the mask, when she first decided to start. Now, the word had no meaning to her. She no longer felt sad. Garnet felt nothing.

She pulled it on.

Garnet rode between the alleys and residential areas, away from the main streets where police were more likely to be prowling. Her motorcycle achieved 100 mph as she sped for the docks, and closer she got the more her wounds ached, as if reminding her what happened last time she made her way there.

Tires screeched against slick pavement, the motorcycle rumbling until it cut off. There were three large warehouses in front of her, each blue and marked with a few letters and numbers to signal their difference. A loading area was on the right of that and already she could see activity of workers on overtime through her working eye, moving crates and turning off machinery. Garnet had to turn her head fully to see the warehouses, and there she could see the shady characters she was looking for.

Of course they came back-- well, new people anyway. She unbuckled the straps on her holster and threw the strap away, leaving the guns free to grab. Garnet approached, sticking close to the side of the building, where the one lone street lamp in the middle of the dock did not illuminate.

Garnet caught the tail end of a conversation.

“Just keep on the lookout.”

“I’m not about-”

“Shut. Up.”

Oh, so they expected her? Garnet slipped towards the corner, pulling a gun from it’s holster, glancing around to get a look at who she will face. Regular man closest to her, but the one farthest had cybernetics--both arms. Frowning, Garnet slipped back around the corner. Perhaps there was another way into the warehouse, but she wanted to stop whatever operation was going on here, and that meant leaving no one alive. But there was no way this could be done quietly.

Fuck it.

Garnet yanked the other gun from her holster and twirled around the corner, firing two shots, hitting both in the head. They went down without much of a grunt, and Garnet went for the doors they were guarding and kicked it open.

To find it empty. No alerted guards.

“You’re predictable.”

Hard metal struck her back, sending her forward with a grunt of pain. Old bruises snapped awake with the new pain, and Garnet barely rolled over in time to miss a boot striking down towards her. It collided with the concrete, leaving a crater in its place and scattering bits of rock into the air. Blue optics looked at her, illuminating the face around them, or rather the helmet around them. Jagged blue lines almost resembled a jack o'lantern grin, matching with the glowing lines that moved across the rest of the helmet without a pattern. The blue optics shrunk and focused on her.

“You’re not much.”

A rapier struck the space Garnet left on the floor as she rolled onto her feet, firing off two bullets that the enemy easily maneuvered around, crouching down with two rapiers at the ready. They were smaller than Garnet, but not by much. Cybernetic armor covered them head to toe, steel grey with blue lines running around it similar to their helmet. Only thing uncovered were their fingers. On the bright side, it purely looked to be a suit, which means they would bleed. Bad news, it still made them far more powerful.

“And I don’t appreciate my men being killed by a lesser.” A feminine voice distorted by modifier said, almost with amusement as she pounced and swung in a large arc, forcing Garnet back and then subsequently forcing her to jump to avoid the strike at her feet. The butt of the rapier caught her in the stomach mid-air, forcing the breath from her lungs. With a grunt, Garnet established distance between them, hunching over as she tried to catch her breath. The assailant approached.

“Not much to say?” She pointed a rapier at her. “Make it fun for me.”

Sucking in a breath, Garnet straightened, rolling her shoulders back. Her fingers twitched on the triggers of her guns, but she resisted the urge to fire them, remembering the ease her opponent had dodging the projectiles.

“Fine then.”

She launched forward with a thrust that Garnet sidestepped and countered, locking her arm around her wrist and hooking her across the face. Her knuckles split from the metal, but at the very least her assailant stumbled back, giving her the opportunity to kick her in the stomach. She lifted a gun and fired, catching her between the eyes and not even leaving a dent where the bullet struck. A distorted laugh.

“Ah, there we go. That’s a fight!”

Again, she rushed at her-- a fan of close combat. Garnet narrowly ducked under the swing, firing the rest of her clip into her stomach, but watched in slight dismay as the bullets crushed and fell to the floor without so much as making a dent. A stabbing pain in her thigh buckled her knees; the second rapier sunk an inch deep into her . It was then that Garnet recognized the pattern. The swings wouldn’t do much with a sword like that, so her assailant was using them to distract her from the thrusts. Her assailant backed away, twirling the swords in her hands.

“Predictable.” She sang, with the voice of robot on broadway, watching as Garnet got to her feet. She waited a few moments for her to stabilize herself, continuing to twirl the sword. 

“Ready?”

A booster activated in her boots, flying her forward with a cloud of blue smoke on her trail. Garnet braced for the hit, crossing her forearms in front of her, but at the last moment her enemy twisted and shot backwards, shrouding the area with the smoke. It took moments for it to clear, but when it did, she was nowhere to be found.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as Garnet checked for the nearest corner, backing away towards it as she glanced around. Nothing on the upstairs catwalks, nothing on ground floor. The warehouse was only partially filled with containers, all of them stacked in the left corner. The open air only made Garnet more nervous, though, as her back hit the corner of the cement wall. She pointed her guns out, waiting with bated breath. For a moment she glanced up to see if her enemy was hiding there. Her eyes fell back forward to meet with blue optics. The rapier thrusted into her chest, bypassing the kevlar material of her vest easily and finding soft flesh. The second rapier found itself accordingly below it. And even with the aching, acid pain of being stabbed, Garnet managed to not scream.

Her enemy backed away, admiring her handiwork it would seem, hands on her hips as Garnet sunk to her knees, gripping at the thin blades.

“I suppose the four were a fluke, weren’t they?” That distorted voice said, almost sickenly sweet in its delivery. She crouched down. “Don’t meddle in my business again.”

Nimble fingers reached around her head, pulling at the straps of her mask. Garnet weakly tried to grab at her wrists, but each time her hands were gently batted away and her enemy continued her work. The mask came loose after a few more seconds, and she pulled it away. The optics expanded and shrunk.

“Mmhm, hidden from quite a few databases, aren’t you?” The optics expanded again. “Ah, there you are! Hello Garnet.”

She glared at her.

“Not much of a talker. I wouldn’t be either if I was dying.”

She hadn’t even noticed, but when Garnet looked down she saw a pool of blood spreading around her. Her skin had gone clammy and her fingers and toes felt like ice.

“I could help,” The voice trailed off, “If you give me the word.”

She could almost hear the grin in her voice. Garnet clenched her fists, baring her teeth at the woman. For as long as she could she held her gaze steady, but little by little everything seemed to dim, and the room starting swelling and shrinking around her. A hand gripped under her jaw to hold her steady.

“The word?”   
She was almost gone from her vision. Garnet gritted her teeth. Her voice, rasped and light from lack of use, scratched out “Fuck you.”

“Ah, there we go.”

Black.

\--

Garnet woke up delirious and confused, staring up at the overhead light, almost bright enough to blind her. Squinting her eyes she turned her head, and found herself in a living room.

Her living room.

She tried sitting up, but sharp, stabbing pains in her middle-section forced her back down with a groan. She rubbed at her stomach, fingers grazing along rough bandaging. Dull memories passed in front of her eyes, but she couldn’t find one that made any sense aside from the continued image of blue optics staring at her. 

Garnet tried sitting up again, ignoring the pain this time. For the first time she noticed that she wasn’t on her couch, or even on the floor, but instead on top of a foldable table with a white cloth over it. It allowed her to see see blood on the table, and the clear handmarks. Instincts kicking into overdrive Garnet swung herself off the table and quickly surveyed the living room. No one in the connected kitchen/dinner room area. No one to the left of her where her large, black collage boards filled with leads were set up. No one near her front door and the smoke trap she left hadn’t been disturbed. Garnet twisted around, finally sighting blue optics and a helmet with a jack o'lantern grin.

Garnet weakly got into a defensive stance.

“Don’t be like that. I’m the one that nursed you from near death.” She stood up, crossing her arms and taking a few steps forward. The optics expanded and shrunk.

“Your vitals seem to be stabilized, though your blood pressure is still low. Sit back down.” 

Garnet didn’t.

“Killing you would be easier when you were already down and dying. Why would I wait for you to wake up?”

Garnet’s fists lowered. The assailant uncrossed her arms.

“If it makes it any better, I didn’t mean to stab you twice. I got caught in the moment.” The voice was almost sheepish, but Garnet had a feeling she didn’t regret it. Sitting back on table immediately showed how drained her body was as her head swam and the room tipped back and forth, her limbs feeling like they were filled with lead. The assailant approached her, stopping right before and reaching a hand out towards her face to cup her chin, forcing Garnet to look her in the eyes. She would have resisted the touch, but her fingers barely wanted to move, much less her hands.

“This is the only mercy that I’ll grant you. Next time you interfere with my business, I won’t be so kind; and I won’t make the kill so clean either.” The assailant almost whispered. She slithered away, watching her for a moment. “They know me as ‘Renegade’, you’d do best to remember that name, Garnet.”

Blue smoke billowed out from her boots, rising to the air where it shrouded her. It dispersed within a few moments, leaving an empty space where Renegade once stood.


End file.
